truistic or social sentiments
which are still deplorably weak. The latter, no doubt, form no part of
the sexual life, but they must be taken into consideration for they
are its most important derivatives, and it is indispensable for our
modern social life to develop them in harmony with family and conjugal
love.

Hereditary instincts can easily be observed in children. When one of
them is good, it gives evidence at an early age of the sentiments of
sympathy or altruism, such as pity and affection, as well as an
instinctive sentiment of duty, the object of which is not yet social.
All these sentiments are at first only applied to human individuals
known to the child, domestic animals, or even inanimate objects. On
the other hand, the ant, from the beginning of its existence, shows an
inherited instinct or sentiment of complete social duty. In man,
social sentiments properly so-called, have to be acquired by
education, but they require for their expansion a considerable degree
of inherited sentiments of sympathy and duty. A person without morals
can easily acquire social phraseology but not social sentiment. A few
more points require to be considered.

Monogamy is no doubt an old and well-established phylogenetic
heritage, while polygamy is on the whole rather an aberration produced
by individual power and wealth. But phylogenetic monogamy is by no
means identical with the religious or other formality of our present
legal monogamy. It assumes first of all an early marriage immediately
after puberty, while our civilization has placed between this and
marriage, which it only allows later as a rule, the unhealthy swamp of
prostitution, which so often sows in the individual the destructive
seed for his future legal union, before this has taken place. Again,
phylogenetic monogamy imposes no legal constraint; on the contrary, it
assumes a free, natural and instinctive inclination in each of the
conjoints, when it is not the result of the brute force of the male.
Lastly, it by no means excludes a change after a certain time. We are
speaking only of man, and not of birds and monkeys, who are more
monogamous than ourselves.

Monogamy without children has little reason for its existence and must
be considered simply as a means to satisfy the sexual appetite or as a
union for convenience. It is the same with certain marriages between
individuals of very different ages, especially the marriage of a young
man with a woman already